Organizing for alterity: A netnography of #AlteritOrg

Longman, Richard

Abstract

This is a thesis about “organizing for alterity” which it conceptualises as organizing with a difference—that is, in terms of how we go about organizing and what the outcomes of organizing might be. The thesis presents a critical analysis of #AlteritOrg, a community of practice identifying as a prototype Teal Organization, and adopting three Teal Organizing practices—self management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose (Laloux, 2014). In the light of this empirical setting, the thesis addresses questions pertaining to the principles and practices of organizing for alterity. The findings come from a netnographic study (Kozinets, 2015) which includes 18 months of fieldwork. The data collection methods comprise 42 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and archival data analysis; fieldwork was also accompanied by reflexive diary studies. Based on a constructivist ontology and an interpretivist epistemology, the thesis adopts a research position which is informed by critical performativity (Spicer, et al., 2009). In that spirit, and derived from the empirically-observed principles and practices of organizing for alterity, the thesis proposes eight qualitative markers that characterise alternative organizing. The thesis relies on the value inherent in “alterity” as a heuristic for revealing new insights and deepening understanding into alternative organizing. Drawing conceptually on prefiguration—and prefigurative attempts at organizing—the thesis embraces Bloch’s ontology of Not-Yet-Being (1968) to account for an organizational alterity which is not formally predetermined. The study extends extant work on alternative organizing and, through its empirical analysis, deepens understanding of mainstream and critical discourses and practices of organizing. Furthermore, it extends knowledge of communities of practice and reveals them as valuable sites for developing knowledge about prefigurative theorisations of organizing.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: May 18, 2021
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6854604
• Award Date: Oct 29, 2020